I continue to subscribe to the Daily Times because it is the paper of record for legal notifications. I work the crossword puzzle, read the comics and then turn to the editorial section for some real comedy.

Two letters that recently appeared in The Times are worth a yuk or two.

The first was a screed by Haven Simmons, who apparently thinks if citizens demand accountability from police, the sky is bound to fall.

The premise is arrant nonsense. Nobody is in the business of demonizing the police, nor do they need to be. The police are doing a very fine job of heaping opprobrium on themselves.

The internet and the printed press are filled daily with stories that remind us policemen are no better or worse than any other profession and no different, except they must be held to a much higher standard of conduct than other professions.

When folks are issued a badge and gun, they must remember it is their duty to serve and protect. When one of their number shoots and kills an 11-year-old child and then goes “oops!” excuses like “the dog ate my homework” and a note from his mother aren't going to suffice, even if the note is one of a number of unconstitutional opinions issued by the Rats Pack on the Supreme Court.

After asserting a Chicken Little premise that threatens the falling sky, Simmons rambles through a mishmash of notions that have little relation to each other, logically or otherwise.

He avoids the two issues that brought us to the point where citizens are demanding stricter accountability:

This nation’s original sin — racism.

Accountability and oversight of police is laid at the feet of feckless, gutless politicians who can’t find the courage to do their jobs.

The second letter was an attempt to peddle a false equivalency between folks who think fascism is a bad idea (see German history) and the latest cover of Der Spiegel, Germany’s premiere magazine, which portrays Donald Trump wearing a KKK hood.

I was recently in Germany, Norway and Iceland, and found folks ready and willing to voice their concern about the direction this country is headed. Without exception, the folks I talked to think the good ole USA is already right off the rails and right round the bend.

Ari Klapholtz’s position, which equates the Nazis, KKK and white supremacists with a small number of those who oppose them is bizarre, especially since it is the same mistake Trump made after Charlottesville — for which he was soundly pilloried, including a thrashing by members of his own party.

I don’t find it at all strange that some folks — who have watched over the years as outfits like the KKK and white supremacy cults leveled violence at anyone who opposed their racist, reactionary stances — declare “enough is enough” and respond in kind.

Violence begets violence. When fascists decided to invade the Berkley campus, it was more than likely they would get a taste of their own medicine.

And now the sky is falling.

While it would please reactionaries if folks in this country for whom they don’t care would march silently into concentration camps, we are dealing with a young generation whose members have had it up to their eyeballs with the dog-whistle racism practiced by Republicans for the last 50 years and now, the unabashed, unvarnished, overt racism practiced by Donald Trump.

What will bring this country to ruin is not opposition to the violence of fascism. What will bring this country to ruin is if good people, decent people, do nothing to oppose them.

Donald L. Singleton is a retired professor of mass communication and journalism.